They all use Open Data resources. This is ready to use data, available for public good in your different social endeavours.
Open Data is an idea that certain pieces of data should be freely available for machine processing and further use and dissemination, including commercial purposes, without any restrictions or control.
Open Data is primarily an opportunity to exchange data in an easy, efficient, and standardized way among all stakeholders, including the authorities.
Open Data resources are published and made available on the internet in a machine-readable format. They are suitable for automated processing by computer systems and programs.
Citizens, businesses, non-profits, public organizations, and scientific institutions are free to publish, copy, distribute and use open data for social, cultural, or environmental purposes.
The Open Data creates an infrastructure which can be easily controlled by the public, improves accountability of the government, and increases transparency. It also has a positive impact on management decisions.
With Open Data resources we can provide citizens with means to solve specific problems.
Additionally, CSOs can provide better services to their beneficiaries and broader audience. This is why today there are hundreds of initiatives based on Open Data. Both at the state and local level.
Let’s take a look at some examples of Open Data services, tools, or apps:
Open State is a service that contains information about legal documents and laws from all 50 US states. The service allows us to examine the content of each of them.
Young Europeans is a portal that uses EUROSTAT Open Data to create demographic sketches with information about Europeans aged 16 to 29.
mWater – A set of tools that implements an integrated approach to managing water and sanitation services and preventing waterborne diseases and their impact on communities.
Flood Alert is a platform and mobile app that informs users about water level in more than 30,000 monitoring stations all over the world. The system helps to respond to the threat of floods in a timely manner.
Citidata is a platform that uses open data and provides detailed information about all US cities – from demographics to weather conditions, costs of housing, and many more.
Kanarek – a Polish service which provides information about air quality. It gathers data from air quality monitoring stations.
Today there are thousands of Open Data portals throughout the world. The Open Data soft project team has compiled the list of almost 4,000 web resources in the world.
If you want to know more about Open Data, how it can be used, and how it should be prepared to be accessible and published, register for our Open Data Self-Paced course today:
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